He hurt inside and out. How could he have let himself loose on everyone? How could he have been so stupid? He should have double-checked, triple-checked, that there was no one in the area but he hadn't. Since he didn't now he had unleashed onto others the consequences of his Bloodlust... not just others but a poor babe and someone that he knew that was a friend. Well... was a friend. He was certain after that whole encounter that he'd burned that bridge, there was nothing he could even do about it. Apologies were worth nothing when you were a bloodthirsty monster.

His head hung low as he trudged through Cetus' swamp. His whole body hurt, sore from the violence that it had endured in the battle with the bear. His chest was the worst of it, seared and blackened by the fire spewed by Leon. Every ache and pain... He felt that he deserved it and more. He hoped Leon was alright... He could only remember what had happened through the thick haze of his bloodlusted vision but he knew he'd done some pretty heavy damage to his former friend.

Baratheon sighed, finally coming to rest in the murkiest part of the swamp. The water was dirty but it was cooler than everywhere else and the mud should help with his burns, or so his instincts told him. Without hesitation he plunged himself into the murky depths so that only his head was showing like some great fuzzy alligator sitting just beneath the surface. It felt good to have the mud coating over his body while he rested completely immobile.

Well... At least the outside of him felt good. The inside still felt terrible and ridden with guilt.

The dragon's eyes closed, blocking out the outside world as he lost himself to his thoughts and eventually to dreamless sleep where there he could temporarily be without the troubles of the outside world.

---

323
@Magdalena
---
7/10

"Talking looks like this!"
Thinking looks like this...

Now, now, this was an interesting find.

She sensed a disturbance almost as soon as it had arisen, carefully monitoring the flux and flow of bacteria flooding the air and water and mud beneath her toes. She had spent so long immersing herself in it that it had become second nature to her, to feel the movement of bacterial forces as they migrated their microscopic journeys, eddying and swirling through every substrate like liquid water itself. She felt every tug, every flex of every protozoan, every foot step that disturbed the layer of microbes she surrounded herself with.

And she felt him.

It had been a long time since she felt him. The last time she had, it had burned deeply in her chest; the last time she even thought of him, it was with nothing but hatred, for how many times had he wronged her? How many times had he taken from her, or nearly, as though he was bent on stripping her down to nothing? Booker she had long considered a lost cause and had come to despise for greater reasons, but Nemesis, her fire, she could not let go. Even as Nemesis and Hestia faded into the recesses of her past as lives no longer existing, their memories persisted, the principles of their existences remained firmly lodged in her heart and he had threatened them. She always wanted to see him wither and die.

Nothing had changed in that time. Everything changed - but nothing about him, or how she felt about him. That was at least one constant. Her curiosity had gotten the better of her though, because the last time she'd even exchanged words with him felt like it had been eons ago, like they were foes from another lifetime, even. But even if that was the case Magdalena's hatred would bleed through. It would linger through this life and into the next, and the life after that; that hatred, every hatred, stained the marble-like stone that curled atop her head. There was an evil that sunk deep into its pores that could not be extinguished.

She drifted like a ghost, an ephemeral image passing between the trees like she was just the short afterthought of a dream. Her paws moved slow, they had to to avoid the twisting, gnarled roots and the brush that threatened to ensnare her. But eventually, she felt his presence radiating, pulsing, static in its position. Magdalena couldn't know exactly how close she was to him or if she was even well hidden. She had come to approach him from the front, staring blindly at the mass of bacteria that propagated within his body, failing to even think of anything to do or say until now. She'd been so caught up in finding him that her only intent had been to hurt him. And now here she was. And he was alive. And he wasn't doing anything.

It wasn't until she caught just the tiniest grunts of a snore that she realized he was asleep, and Magdalena stepped back, reassessing her options. There was something she'd been wanting to try for a long time, and what better subject could she find than this? Something insidious coiled darkly within her, reaching out to pierce its icy fingers into the dragon's subconscious.

The dragon's mind was surprisingly harder to permeate than she expected. Was it because she hadn't had much practice with this sort of magic, or was it simply because his skull was so thick? Magdalena stepped back again, searching the powerful pull of his bacteria. She gritted her teeth, forcing her magic out with greater concentration and greater strength, willing to dig deep into the dreams that ran in his head.

Magic lashed out towards the dragon, a spike of arcane sight driving like a knife into the very depth of his brain; Magdalena hadn't expected it to suddenly give way, but before she realized that she'd even succeeded, her body trembled and collapsed into the mud. She had managed to gasp out before losing control, and then consciousness, the preexisting blackness of her vision illuminating with something she'd never experienced before.

There was what looked like a dim glow. Magdalena didn't know what a glow looked like, only that it was something different that the darkness, something capable of splitting it apart. The blackness eased into a colour lighter than black. She didn't know how to describe it. And she could feel wind on her face, cold and brisk, rushing past like she was running. Magdalena blinked and turned her head, searching for an explanation. To her sides, she was surprised to find a pair of large wings flapping gracefully, pushing a body below through the air. Below that, she could see... stone. Miles and miles of stone.

Was this what the cave looked like?

The body below her jerked slightly. It lifted higher, and Magdalena leaned over to peer past its shoulder. She didn't recognize the cream and black furred creature she rode upon, and nor did she recognize the beast beside it, whose size dwarfed even the first creature, whose eyes gleamed and body undulated with the thermals. All above them tiny pinpricks of light twinkled and a large, full stone glowed white. She didn't know where she was or who she was with. Only that she was traveling.

Her consciousness blipped in and out of existence there. She wanted to find Baratheon. Her voice called out to him, a thousand voices all at once, coalescing into a slithering whisper that reached out in search of him. "Baratheon." She hummed, countless eyes absorbing the scene from every angle, relentless.

@Baratheon

Behind his mind's eye the darkness gradually faded away into stars and a bright, full moon. He rode upon strong, sturdy wings into the windy night. He could feel warm air lifting him upwards, caressing his fur and lulling him into a sense of peace. Beside him his son flew, the black and white dragon had somehow joined him mid-flight... Or perhaps they had taken off together? In the nature of a dream he couldn't quite remember how it began but he was there to reap the benefits of the peaceful flight with a beloved relative. A happy hum lilted in his throat, echoing into the outside world as his joy at being aloft manifested into the pleasant tune. For now in his mind he was able to get away from the guilt that plagued him on the outside, where his scorched and bloody body would remind him of his terrible actions.

In his mind there were no limits, he flew to a destination unknown. His wings gave a heavy flap, displacing air as he used them to stay aloft. When another came into his mind, he didn't feel it, wasn't aware of it even as the images of his mind began to flicker. The moon began to take on a yellow-ish tint, a strange color but one that seemed... somehow familiar. He blinked his eyes as the light bathed his coat in its new light.

"Baratheon."

The words were strangely distorted. In a way they were Khoridai's but in the same way they were not. He did not question it, there was nothing to question, things just were here. With a smile on his face he glanced sidelong at his son's young face. "Yes, Khori? What is it?" He rumbled out lowly, pleasantly. There was no suspicion, nothing to suspect that the flickering was bothering him. There was a ghostly fog starting to set in but strangely it seemed to coalesce about the other dragon. Perhaps it was the clouds they were passing through...

Perhaps not.

---

337
@Magdalena
---
7/10

"Talking looks like this!"
Thinking looks like this...

Fragments of her consciousness blinked in and out within the dream. An opening mouth gasping for air, with rows of shining, glimmering teeth. An eye opening slowly, bulging from its socket and twitching with hunger to drink in the sky. Her heart thudded within a rib cage that was not her own. She stared at the dragons from above and from below, she crawled out from the young son's gums and took flight as a passing thought, trailing her nails through the rustling fur of Baratheon's mane. She existed everywhere and nowhere. It was a transience that made her feel displaced from the world and like she belonged all the same.

This was her realm, it caved under her pressure and reshaped to her whim. She would find Baratheon here. She would make him suffer like he deserved to after so long of waiting.

The voice echoed as though bouncing off walls in an isolated room, but there were no walls, there was nothing, nothing but open space. He turned to her and spoke, his gentle intonation whimsical, at peace. She sought to shatter it. The massive beast with thick fur and waving hair and gleaming wings, it was him, Baratheon. Whoever it was that flew beside him was her first target.

Magdalena honed all of her focus on the dragon referred to as Khori. All of her shifted like she was a glitch jumping between processes, and suddenly she inhabited the dream husk of the young son, experiencing for the first time powerful wings that beat on her back, and a long, tenuous form, a body uncrippled by sickness. She parted her jaws and marveled at its strength, running her tongue along its teeth. And she twisted her head to look at him with a virginal smile, and her eyes danced, and she implored him to love her.

"Baratheon." She repeated, forming the word around her mouth. The air sang like angels.

But for half a second, the angels screamed.

She smiled still. And she spoke. And her grip on Khori faltered as she reached out, and just as quickly she was struggling to retain her hold on the body. Her voice jarred back and forth between belonging to the dragon and blaring from the entirety.

"W̶̝̎aAAAa̵̰͂T̵͉͒TC̷̻͋t̷̺̓c̶͎̿ẖ̵̎ ̴͈͌ Ḿ̶͜Ḿ̶͜Mm̵͎̉e̶̺͌e."

The voice simultaneously screamed and whispered, laughing like a bell behind gurgling, roaring, wracking syllables. She gripped the body with everything she had, and the body fell limp, suddenly dropping from the air. It plummeted quickly to the ground, rippling with lifelessness, moving faster, faster, never close enough for Baratheon to touch. Just a breath out of reach. The ground approached them quickly, yawning like a pair of sinister black jaws hungry to close around them both.

@Baratheon

The dreamer was unaware of the state that he was in, unaware that there was an interloper that toyed with the fabrics of his mind. It was all normal, all peaceful, all just right as his son turned to him and smiled. He could see the love in his son's eyes, it made his heart glow with warmth. It made his mind sing and the very air hum with the depth of his devotion. Until the very air itself seemed to crackle with the shrieks of the dead. For a moment his peace was shattered, his eyes darkening as he felt the first few moments of panic surfacing from beneath the joy. Khoridai's words were like a demonic song, plagued with fiendish torment that ripped and tugged at his heart. His humming stopped, his head turned fully to his son... Only to see him plummet from the air.

"KHORIDAI!" He screeched in anguish as the lifeless body of the young dragon twisted and fell into oblivion. Instantly he fell into action, his wings tucked closer to his white body as he plunged after his son. He cared not for his own safety, only that his son would be alright. He had to be alright... right? His heart twisted, his gut felt like it was about to fall out of his body as he pushed himself faster and faster in the hopes of catching up to Khoridai. No matter how hard he tried it seemed as if he couldn't catch up to his son, his wings just couldn't push him harder nor could gravity pull him fast enough. Tears sprang to his eyes, salty and wet and stinging as the windy night slapped at his face. It was a further insult to the injury of possibly losing his boy...

No, he had to try. He had to go faster but even he could see it was no use. The earth rushed upwards, impossibly fast... He couldn't make it..

He couldn't do it...

"No... No, please!" His lips formed the words in his dream and without as he begged for Khoridai's life. He didn't care if he lost his own, he only wanted the boy to live. His paws reached out, grasping for even a tendril of hair to hold onto and just slow Khori's descent.

But there was nothing.

---

388
@Magdalena
---
7/10

"Talking looks like this!"
Thinking looks like this...

The body fell faster and faster. Baratheon had fallen straight into her trap, diving in a desperate attempt to catch up to the other dragon and prevent him from making contact with the ground that grew closer and closer with every second. She envisioned rocks and crags all around them, and dangerous, jagged spikes that rose up from the earth like vicious teeth, gnashing, hungry, always hungry. She craved to feel the impact of the body, to feel all the bones breaking simultaneously, to have blood pour freely and feel the crack of the skull. Whether she wanted to experience this in her own body or witness it she didn't know; the sentiment of horror enveloped her, and she didn't care if it was her that was dying, crushed under her own weight. She almost wanted to feel that pain.

The ground closed up as though arcing around the falling dragons, bubbling out to prolong the fall, until all at once it sprang back up at them. Magdalena felt the impact radiate through her entire body. But it hadn't left a crumpled form for Baratheon to weep over, no; it hadn't left anything. It swallowed them alive, leaving them in blackness for a few, fleeting seconds, the uncertainty of Khoridai's fate hovering like a devastating storm cloud.

It wasn't enough. She sought more faces. More Gembounds that held the heart of this one, still alive in the doldrums of his dream. So through the black she spoke again, her voice contorting to the next familiar presence that lurked in the back of his mind.

"Did you see? Did you see, Baratheon? Watch me." She whispered, daring the dragon to manifest another beloved within the shadows of the dream.

@Baratheon it went black after Khoridai crashed, so now she's trying to coax him into dreaming about someone else. kinda like, waking up from a dream, but still in a dream? you can pick who she takes the form of next!

He flew at a breakneck pace, he willed his body against impossible odds to catch up to his son. No matter how hard he tried he never could catch up though, on the ground rocks and crags jutted up into sight. The already deadly earth had become even more deadly, it was waiting to swallow them both. To dash them against it and spill their blood and bones across the land. Baratheon didn't care, if he had to die to protect his child then he would. His life he would forfeit a thousand times over, if only he had a thousand deaths to give just so Khori would have one life to live.

Then, the impact came. He was not fast enough, he knew he wasn't but just as they both were about to meet their ends everything went black. He jerked his head upwards, eyes wide as he saw the green leaves of Eridanus. Trees towered all around him while he lay in front of the giant white mushroom with a small black horse curled into his side. Delphine. One wing was draped delicately over her and he remembered that the foal had asked him to watch her do something. What he couldn't remember... At the moment his thoughts were scattered, still reeling from the dream about Khoridai. His son had been killed against the rocks, he was sure of it and there was nothing he could even do!

He shook his head, looking down at his small charge as he forced himself to focus for her. It was just a dream, right? Khori was... He was okay... Surely. "No, no I'm sorry, Delphine. I was distracted. Please, show me again." What had been going on past Delphine showing him something?

---

292
@Magdalena
---
7/10

"Talking looks like this!"
Thinking looks like this...